Frying Tonight? - By Howard Leader

Frying Tonight? 

By Howard Leader

www.bespokemodelbuildings.co.uk

In Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, there is a fish and ship shop of some renown.  People come from miles around for their take away suppers or to eat in the small dining room.  Such a fan of their fayer is one railway enthusiast that I was asked to build a 4mm scale model of the shop for his steam era layout.

The building is in the conservation area of the village and probably dates to the early Victorian period. It may originally have been two of a row of alms-houses but its use and appearance has clearly changed a lot over the years.  Much of the historic frontage is recognisable with original sliding windows and pan tiled roof.  The back of the building, however, has had a number of additions to make extra space for modern domestic and business accommodation.

My brief was to keep as much of the “look” of Suttons Fish & Chip shop as possible but to omit the modern alterations at the back of the property so that it would sit better on a steam era layout.  I was also asked to model the ground floor interior and install lighting.

So, I set to, firstly redesigning the rear of the property, retaining what were probably early elevations and omitting the more obviously late 20^th century additions.  I was greatly helped in this by the owners of the shop allowing a photographic visit from which a set of interior and exterior images were obtained. 

Having made my technical drawings, I set about cutting out the various elevations and installing the windows.  The “historic” windows, being of a very unusual design, I hand made.  For the remainder, in part of the rear of the property, I used etched brass sash windows from my own catalogue of brass components. (see my website for more details on etched brass components).

The interior was the biggest challenge.  I began with the dining room, being careful that all of the windows and doors look as good from the inside as from outside.  Once the walls were painted, in accordance with Sutton’s interior colour scheme, I added historic “photographs” of Grimsby fish docks to adorn the seating area, as they have in the prototype.

The shop side was rather more difficult.  I wanted to capture as much of the Sutton’s look as possible so slowly built the kitchen area and fryer, tiled the walls etc until I was happy that it had the feel of Suttons Fish & Chip shop.  Everything in the kitchen, with the exception of the figures, was hand made and I painted the figures to suit.

That just left the installation of lighting then I could get the roof on and decorate the outside of the building.  There are two aspects of Suttons which are know to all their customers – they keep the building looking very smart with fresh paintwork each year and they always have some hanging baskets on the front wall.  So, I went light with the weathering on the building and made some hanging baskets to finish off.  That just left the most apparent feature of the shop from street level – the signage over the door and on the illuminated sign.  For this detail I came to Trackside Signs and was delighted with their faithful reproduction of the original shop signage.  I had already made and installed a working illuminated sign so all I had to do was locate the printed signs and the model suddenly looked a lot like Sutton’s Of Wainfleet.

My grateful thanks to James and his team at Trackside Signs – it is the little details that make a model.

Howard Leader

Bespoke Model Buildings

You can see more of Howard’s work on his website www.bespokemodelbuildings.co.uk